Getting crushed at work right now so blogging is taking a backseat. Who knew taking a major leap forward in your career and being near the top of a major company would be time-consuming…
I’ve been playing a bit of Rimworld lately, and its just reminded of me that no matter how much changes, once you play a game, going back to it means feeling a sense of ‘sameness’. That’s not always bad (I’ve happily gone back to Mount and Blade many times), but it can be, and in the case of Rimworld, kinda is.
Since I last played and the upcoming 1.0 official release, the game has certainly improved and expanded, but not so much that it feels new. And the core problem I have with such games is once you master the basics (how to keep your people alive and progressing), a large part of the game is ‘done’. Sure, there are new traits, items, and technologies to see, but grinding to see them is just that, grinding. I’m not in danger of losing the game, since the basics of growing food and keeping people happy are still the same.
Not that any of the above is a knock on Rimworld, its an AWESOME game, but its more a reflection of that style of game. The fun is in figuring out how the systems all work, and seeing that knowledge applied to move the game forward. The real fun isn’t in seeing the ‘stuff’ that you accomplish, it’s about taking the steps to accomplish said goals.
The tricky thing, at least for me, is that when I see a game like Rimworld in Early Access, I have a hard time not playing it until the full release. Part of that is full release can take years (Rimworld was in development for 5+ years). Another part is sometimes (often) I want to play that kind of game RIGHT NOW, and so I do. Plus for many games the 1.0 release isn’t the end, so even if I wait for that, I might still not play the ‘final’ version if said game gets future DLC or an expansion. So it’s a gamble either way, and most of the time, I’d rather have slightly less fun in that moment, than delay playing a game until its ‘done’.
Hardcore Casual 
I’m with you on this. I saw that it was set to leave early access and loaded it up to give it another run. There are some neat improvements. But I spent enough time with it before that I can spot and get past the critical inflection points, after which it becomes managing people, working towards a goal, and dealing with random events. I still put in another dozen hours of play time with that, so value for the money is still excellent, but it definitely has the same problem games like Civ have, where the opening is often very engaging, but then comes the mid-game grind as you position yourself for the finale.
I started playing again recently as well but as soon as I found out it releases tomorrow I figured I’d hold off until then. I managed to build the spaceship and gtfo once like a year or two ago so I imagine a lot has changed in the later game. One thing I’ve heard of is that one of the ship parts now has like a warmup timer of like 10 days or some shit, and while its doing that nearby enemies are alerted. Apparently those 10-15 days can be real intense so I’m planning on going for a win after release just to see if I still can.
You can start playing now, the 1.0 release is save-game compatible with the current beta 19 version, and 1.0 will mostly just be bug fixes.
Nice, I now know what to play tonight.